Udvar-Hazy Ride

Our first sponsored ride will be to the Udvar-Hazy Center on Saturday, May 5. It will be a social ride of about 12 miles total and will include an hour stop at the Center to view the exhibits and the Shuttle Discovery. 

There are still plenty of slots open. The ride is for WABA members and should be a fun, casual ride. Registration is required. Bike parking is free compared to the $15 fee for cars.

FABB sponsors ride to Udvar-Hazy Center on May 5

The Space Shuttle Discovery has arrived!  Why drive to the Smithsonian Udvar-Hazy Center and pay $15 to park when you can ride and park your bike for free?  FABB is hosting a social ride to give WABA members a chance to share ideas about transportation cycling while enjoying a leisurely ride through Oak Hill neighborhoods.  We will ride 6 miles to the museum, lock up our bikes and spend 1 hour enjoying the museum.  Afterwards we’ll ride 6 miles back to Reston under a stream valley viaduct. WABA Members only (due to insurance reasons).  Helmets are required.  We are keeping our first ride small so register early.

Date:  5/5/2012 at 9 am

Rain Date: 5/6/2012 at 9 am **Rain date will be announced by 7am on ride day. Look for an email and in our events page.

• Riders will depart at 9am from the Reston South Park & Ride.   The ride is a combination of neighborhood streets (on-road), multi-use trails and a short section of 4-lane road near the Museum.  We will cross a stream (1-2 inches over concrete) at a fair weather crossing.
• The ride is about 12 miles round trip
• We will stay at the museum for an hour before heading back to Reston.  There are U-racks to lock your bike.  Admission is free.
• This is a no-drop social ride at a 10-12 mph pace... no lycra or fast road bikes needed.
• The ride is for adult WABA Members.  Children 14-18 may participate if they are accompanied by an adult WABA member.
• FABB will provide Ride Marshalls for the ride

Space Shuttle lands today

The Space Shuttle Discovery will land at Dulles Airport this morning between 10-11am. It will then go on display at the Udvar-Hazy Center. See the Center's Discover activities page. You can drive there and pay $15 to park or bike there and park for free in the bike parking located near the main entrance.

FABB ride to Udvar-Hazy Center

Entering the Udvar-Hazy Center

FABB plans to hold some social rides this year. Tom Wyland is our ride coordinator and today he led a "dry" run of the planned Udvar-Hazy Center ride. As you can imagine, the ride was not so dry but it wasn't that wet either despite the forecast.

The group met at the Reston Town Center then we headed out on the W&OD and Fairfax County Parkway trails to Franklin Farm Rd, a busy cut-through route. Even though traffic was light, it wasn't a pleasant ride given the impatient motorists. At Centreville Rd we turned right on the paved side path to Wall Rd. Here we discovered there are no crosswalks across Centreville Rd and the traffic signal only works on the other 3 legs of the intersection, which required us to dash across when traffic cleared.

We then took a left onto Air and Space Museum Parkway, a wide, multi-lane road with almost no traffic. There are also no bike or ped facilities. It's an incredibly expensive, wide road and bridge across Route 28 that probably handles a couple of thousand cars a day; imagine what bike facilities could have been built for the cost of just that stretch of road.

Bike parking a long walk from the entrance

It was a short ride to the Udvar-Hazy entrance where we rode past the booths where parking attendants were collecting $15 from motorists. In front of the center is good bike parking in a not so good location. The U racks are well spaced but are not covered and are a long walk from the entrance. Closer to the building entrance there is an overhang with plenty of space for the racks.

We spent about an hour going through the museum and then we headed back to Reston. On the return trip we decided to check out another route using mostly neighborhood streets. We headed north on Centreville Rd to Kinross Circle to L on Cobra Dr. Near the end is a paved trail in Horsepen Run Stream Valley Park that leads under McLearen Rd using a viaduct, one of the only examples of this type of crossing in the county.

The trail continues along a utility right of way to West Ox Rd where we got onto New Parkland Dr to Farthingdale Dr to Pinecrest Dr across Fairfax Co Parkway and where we crossed our outbound route. We continued on Pinecrest to L on Magna Carta, L on Keele Dr to L on Fox Mill Rd where there's a paved shoulder to R on Bedfordshire Circle. We turned R on Rosedown to L on Glade to L on Sunrise Valley Dr back to the FFX Co Parkway trail and then back toward the Town Center.

We learned a lot about the logistics of doing this type of ride. We hope to hold the first ride this Spring and several others over the Summer and Fall. The rides will be open to WABA members.

Update: Here's a google map of our route to Udvar-Hazy.